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Online Population now Half Billion
mattvd writes "According to CNN, the number of people with Web access at home by the end of 2001 was 498 million." Not surprisingly, Asia is growing the fastest. It's amazing
that in only 10 years or so, the net has exploded so far, so fast, and now touches 10% of the earths population.
Let's hope all these new sexy users won't spam my mailbox more than it is already :)
When 600 million Chinese, 100 million japanese, 300 million indians, and 40-50 million africans get online, thats when the real online revolution will take place.
Right now we need to make sure they all have the choice to use Linux, give them some good development tools, graphics tools, and just wait for them to produce information which benifits the world, hopefully they wont be as capitalist as us and patent everything or else we'll be at their mercy.
If you use Linux, please help development of Autopac
What do they use it for? Surfing? Shopping? IM? what? I think that information would be more useful than just a numbner.
----- Whats wrong with this picture? http://www.revoh.org:1234/whatswrong
But 10% seems like so little. As John "Maddog" Hall says, that just means that 5 billion people haven't choosen their operating system yet.
There are SIX billion people on Earth, Taco, not 4.98 billion.
(But what's a billion people or so between friends, right?)
...And, in related news, half of the Online Population still believe that "the Internet" and "AOL" are synonymous (the same half, incidentally, who thought 'The Net' was a great film).
With news like this comming out it makes me wonder what these people who say that the WWW is going to die are thinking. With a base as large as that it is near imposible to kill it. Im sure there will be new tech that comes along and makes the WWW better faster and friendlier but die? I don't think so.
Now the problem is with all these people fighting over bandwidth when are chaeper faster pipes be available for us to use? When can I say hey there are 1 mill users hitting my site and there is no lag?
I also wonder what these people are looking at. 90% porn and the other 10% refrence material and such.
If I were only smart enough to accomplish the things I dream about.. Or maybe too dumb to care.
I find it amazing that there could be half a billion people online and I still can't find decent content... Slashdot excluded of cource.
Business News and Resources: www.usasource.net
How much of the earth's population has access to TV?
There are 6.2 billion people on the planet now, by the way.
With the current population 5,995,544,836 that makes the percent of the people online only about 8.3%. In reality it's probably even lower when you think about how many millions of those are using AOL connections;)
I stole this Sig
400+ million people going to the same site at the same time... and you thought 'slashdot effect' was bad ;). IMHO with the diversity of the net, how can one government control it? US laws are fine for US citizens, but how can we pass laws that will affect the world... We don't control it?! It really makes you wonder who really *controls* the net? So many people, from so many countries, how can anyone possible have the 'authority' to decide what happens to the net. It may have started in the US (thank you mr gore, ;)) but now it is beyond our borders. IMHO so it is beyond our 'laws'.
Let's just hope there's no Slashdot-Asia planned for the near future. That would REALLY take the Slashdot effect to a new level....
Yes, now let's implement IPv6 before these 'netless' people come online. It will be easier with less people, so start speeding things up =)
We have over six billion people on the planet now - quickly approaching seven. 498 million isn't 10% of that. More like 8.3%.
Still cool though.
--And the Geek shall inherit the earth
And how many of those 500 million "people" are actually 'bots, spam-email accounts, and extra slashdot troll accounts?
Most of the people of the world haven't even made a phone call. This is one those "400 million people watched the Superbowl" statistics.
By the time we got to www.woodstock.com,
We were half a billion strong.....
I guess this means theirs two porn sites for every person on the internet
Most students in the cities have email and access the net quite regularly, if only for gaming or chat through these cyber-cafes and not at home. Also gives privacy
And once the government legalises VoIP there is definitely going to be a huge boom in the use of the cyber-cafes.
I am pretty sure that this must be the case in most developing economies. Of course like this article says it needs to become a productivity tool.
All bow to his Noodliness!! His Noodle Appendage has touched me!
I dont believe 100 percent of every chinese personn will be connected. But i do believe maybe 70 percent will.
If you use Linux, please help development of Autopac
I think if you look around you'll notice this in discussion boards accross the online realm. A statistic a remember from a few years ago said that GenerationX [of course] was the fastest growing while the baby-boomers, of all people, were the second fastest. But, of late, I've noticed a more well rounded internet community.
Of course, some age groups are still more likely to participate in voicing their opinions than others...
Oh, and though a bit off topic - I just can't get used to that Hong Kong, China thing... its just... weird.
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For a little perspective, check out the brochure from the ITU World Telecommunication Development Conference 2002. A hopeful note, according to that link: "Africa now has more than twice as many main telephone connections as Tokyo and 85 percent of today's world population share 45 percent of all telephone lines (see Figure 1). In comparison, in 1984, 90 percent of the world's people used only ten percent of all telephone lines."
-Isaac
I am not a lawyer, and this is not legal advice. For Entertainment Purposes Only.
Let me guess - wrong article?
First, there's over 6 billion people in the world, not 5 billion, so the 10% figure is a little off.
A 32 bit number (ipv4 address are 32 bits) can have 4 billion numbers in it. With the 10.*.*.* (16 million) and 192.168.*.* (65 thousand), there's less, and of course we have routers... so if we have only 200 addresses available on each subnet, we get 1.6 e+09.
That makes 1,600,000,000 1 billion, 600 million. If we really have a problem with too few IP addresses, there's a lot more than 490 million internet users.
"And we have seen and do testify that the Father sent the Son to be the Savior of the World"
1 John 4:14
Here is the PDF from Nielsen. It contains more data than the CNN story.
...that some of these people haven't downloaded the latest version of the Internet. I actually went out the other day to buy a new version of the Internet, and the sales guy looked at me like I was stupid. So I smacked him.
-------------------------------------------
Saving baby carrots around the globe.
So who knows how many third world mom and dads are walking down to the cybercafe every weekend to see if their son in America has sent any new e-mail - but I'll bet it's a pretty high number.
The most recent number I could find was 25 million for the number of AOL users. This would make them 5% of all users. AOL is the largest ISP in the world, but at 5% of the total it (thankfully) doesn't seem all that significant. I don't know why AOLers get such a bad name. Sure, there are lots of stupid kids on there, but I think the only reason they are singled out is because the population size is so large. Get 25 million people together anywhere and there will be a ton of "lusers" in the group. AOL doesn't seem like such a bad choice for dial-up service. I'd definitely go with them before MSN. Maybe Earthlink would get my $$$, but it's a moot point, since I've moved beyond my dial-up days.
-- Adam
Yes, the population is going up, but will this trend continue to accelerate of is there a glass ceiling that we will hit with the large chunk of the world the can barely get a phone connection (if that, in most areas...) we will run out of existing infrastructure shortly in these countries, and good infrastructure cant be put in place overnight...
My parents have a high speed connection at their home, but it's for me when I visit. Calling them members of the online population would be sort of misleading. Now we're down to 497,999,998 people actually using the internet from home. Sure they have access, but that means next to nothing in terms of how much they'll purchase online - and THIS is what I assume those numbers will be used for when shady CEO's are trying to convince their board members that they'll be selling 10x as much whatever online in a year, and that the funding is a good investment. ~D
We cannot lose sight of the fact, however, that it is not the only way to work, live and be social. As the article states, 90% of the world is still not online, and it's a safe bet to say that many of those have probably never even heard of the Internet, and perhaps have no interest in it. While the propogation of these types of technologies throughout Asia and Africa would no doubt improve many lives and perhaps even give credibility to the notion that technology can help people transcend constraining economic, social and political barriers, we must still remember that we are living in a mostly offline world in which technology and modernity has just as often been used to oppress, homogenize and destroy.
So yes, the growth of the Internet is amazing, but, as with everything else, we should no be surprised to find unintended consequences from its growth.
sig my booty, check my website
The idea is to have a bunch of internet connected devices all with their own ip addresses. And each person may own several of those.
Also the allocation of IP addresses is not completely efficient. I dont remember exactly how it works, but there are groups of addresses differentiated by the first digits, and different organizations own those groups, so one group may be over crowded while others are empty.
Windows Alternative Network Kde Environment Resource is perfectly suited to those of us who touch themselves
I predict mass acceptance of WANKER linux
- Kaos games and encryption systems developer
Whether we like it or not, there are people who fear, loath and hate the western view of life, or at least the materialistic and individualistic aspects of it. Life will not be cozy when these people realize that the internet is yet another way that western thought is invading their culture.
If I was one of these individuals, I would do everything in my power to either destroy or neuter the liberating effects(or as they see it, perverting) of such a worldview. As I see it, we should concentrate on infrastructure security now, before these individuals realize the threat that comes knocking via the net. Instead of worrying about content provisions(yes they are important, but the market rules the people you fear) we should be more concerned with methods for shutting down DDOS's and tracking and stopping of virus makers who would want nothing more than to bring this medium to its grave.
Well you see, theres only billions of people left and millions of internet cafes and terminals in 3rd world countries who need an OS thats easy to use and cheap.
Say hello to linux on the desktop.
Not to mention Linux on the desktop would actually help promote innovation through contribution via GNU.
If you use Linux, please help development of Autopac
actually i was half serious there. some day the net may have more "people" than there actually are on this planet if not already.
in 2020 spam lists with less than trillion addresses will be pointed at and laughed.
The USA wants the government not to control the Chinese internet, so their our US Capitalist big businesses can take control.
We dont have freedom on the net ourselves, China wont have it either, its about control, the US wants to dominate the internet and China is a big market, by opening them up it opens them up to Capitalism.
China is most likely to use linux than we are, i thought we were all about freedom.
If you use Linux, please help development of Autopac
Not trying to troll but,
I just hope Americans will stop thinking that Internet is American soil, it aint.
It is widely reported that more than 3 billion people in the world have no access to a telephone at all. In fact, according to the Center for Media Education, 18% of Americans lack telephone service.
This makes the number of people online something like 15 to 16 percent of the population with telephone access.
You can find some more interesting information about telephone and Internet access around the world here and here.
The Big News Page
Make that 6,199,999,999. ;-)
Are we talking American billions or British billions ;)
;) )
British billion = one million million
US billion = one thousand million
Probably US billions. You'd think that this sort of thing would be standardised. (No, not standardized, standardised
Why is Thursday scared?
Because Friday, August 7th, 2009!
and I wonder what percentage of those actually know anything about how the net works. Whilst I am pleased to see that more and people have access to a huge ammount of information, I am slightly saddened at the destruction of the old times at the hands of AOLers and Jeff K. Talkalikes.
it really irritates me that people like you (and the rest of slashdot) equate "the internet" and "the web." plenty of people use the internet for non-web purposes.
500 million people certainly is a lot, and the industry as a whole has quite a bit to brag about (that much growth in only 10 years is phenominal.) However, there are a lot of the things the industry should be ashamed of, too. Usability seems to have come a long way in the last few years, but the best thing to ever happen to personal computing in terms of usability, the introduction of the GUI-based PC to the masses, will be the celebrating it's 20th birthday in 2004. 20 years and there is still a market for 400 page manuals on How To Use Microsoft Windows selling in Barnes and Nobles. How many 400 page manuals do you see selling on how to operate your microwave or your alarm clock? Your TV? How about how to send snail mail or take/develop photos? Sure PC's are complicated machines, sure the PC can do a lot more than a microwave... but does Jane Doe Grandma care? Not really, she just wants to see pictures of her grandchildren on that live hundreds miles of away, and she wants them on Christmas morning as they open their gifts. How likely is she to spend hours trying to learn how to buy a computer, plug in the 7 different wires, figure out how to dial up to a service provider, learn how to launch and use her email client, and load up the attached pictures in her photo-editing software. Not likely. It's not that she or the billions of other people on this planet that are not connected aren't capable of learning, it's that it's just not worth it to them. Face it: using a PC takes a time investment of several hours _just_ to do basic tasks, and all these people want to do is send email/pictures/video to their families, maybe read the news, and be done with it. What other home appliance (since that's what the PC is and should be to these people) have you seen that takes 2 minutes to boot up? How about that you have to push 30+ buttons to operate (how many keyboard presses & mouse clicks does it take to do what Jane Doe Grandma wants?). This all sounds pretty trivial to us geeks because we're used to pressing THOUSANDS of buttons a day to get what we want done, but we are a minority. To the 5.5 billion other people on this planet: it just seems too complicated. Have there been attempts at bridging the gap between layman and machine? Of course, but most have failed miserably. Email appliances were clunky, ugly, and still unbelievably hard to use. Windows XP still has the same complicated GUI that has been around for more 7 years (just with bigger, brighter, more obxnoxious buttons). Does it look easier? Sure, I guess. Still takes hundreds of mouse clicks to read email/news. My TV takes three to get CNN.
Just imagine how slow things are going to be when the other 90% of the planet is slash dotting things...
I am not a number! I am a man! And don't you
I'll think you'll find I'm actually on topic, we are discussing the online population size in this story.
why does any jackass who wants more linux users automatically get modded up?
Why does every criticism of linux get automatically modded down?
Slashdot has no sense of free speech or democracy, there are always 2 sides to every story
- Kaos games and encryption systems developer
According to CNN, the number of people with Web access at home by the end of 2001 was 498 million...
Ah, the busy signals...
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This crap really gets very old, very fast.
There's not going to be a revolution. Why should there? Has anyone English been significantly affected by the addition of millions of Japanese pages? Will the addition of billions of Chinese pages make any difference? No.
Even the addition of millions of Chinese surfers will not make a difference to the web. They're going to be off surfing, producing, and supporting mostly Chinese sites, and we will stay in the English ones.
In fact, I would propose that the addition of all those extra people makes the Net less prone to revolution, not more. If they were competing with us for scare resources, that would be one thing. But the Net will expand exponentially to accommodate them and they can all do their own thing. In their own language.
Careers should combine three things: what you can do, what you want to do, and what you can get paid for.
This is why Slashdot sucks ASS now. Every story MUST have a Linux edge, or be effected by Linux, or involve Linux in some way. Only comments building up Linux are rated higher, and anyone who disagrees is rated low.
Well fuck you. Fuck you and fuck this site. I'm outta here! I'm even posting as anon for fear of getting my karma trashed...but then again I'm never coming back so fuck that too.
Look. Linux will never succeed when it's only proponents are 14 year old school fucks living in their parents basement. It might play a "small" part in back room computing, but will never, ever, ever become a desktop of choise for most people. Period.
So the on-line population is now 500 million. Great, that has FUCK ALL TO DO WITH LINUX!
If Internet Explorer is such an inseparable component of the Windows operating system, then why the hell does Microsoft make you agree to TWO SEPARATE EULAS? There's one for Windows and another for the browser (when you download and install it)?
VoIP is legal from March 1st or something. The only condition is that service providers must state if the call is toll quality or not in their ads.
The cost of long distance was high in order to cross subsidize the rural areas. They are slowly giving up on this, although quite a large portion of the country now has telephony access due to this.
All bow to his Noodliness!! His Noodle Appendage has touched me!
Since all you need is a small room, a broadband connection (usually ISDN, rarely DSL) and a few computers competition is quite fierce. The systems have to be really low cost and I think purchasing a legal copy of Win x would drive them out of business.
Gaming is quite good but not to the level of Korea etc.
All bow to his Noodliness!! His Noodle Appendage has touched me!
I don't think many people have multiple IP addresses. Hey, there's 9 people in my family, and we use 1 address. I'm sure that in many other american families, the story is similar. Also, regular users generally connect to a dynamic network, and aren't on 24/7.
The entire internet contains 251 * 254 * 254 * 254 (4.113153e+09) This doesn't include 10.*.*.* or 192.*.*.* or 127.*.*.*
Would it make sense for there to be more than twice the number of routers, dns servers, mail servers, and web servers than internet users?
"And we have seen and do testify that the Father sent the Son to be the Savior of the World"
1 John 4:14
The correct statistic from your cite is 6.1% of all American households lack telephone service in their home. Also, you can hardly compare these Americans, who likely are at least NEAR a phone due to neighbors, pay phones, etc., to the poor people who live in Chinese and African villages and may not be within MILES of a phone.
All movements for social change begin as missions, evolve into businesses, and end up as rackets.
Ive been online for around 8 years now. And now there are many many new people coming online all the time. Many of whom have prolly never heard of usenet/gopher/telnet/IRC etc... makes me feel kinda old, in the online sence. anyone else feel this way?
Come on China hurry up with your population of billions, we need more warez pirates. There's already a movement, "Do you know how to spell warez in chinese?" Google does.
The internet doesn't even exist. 'The internet' as we know it is just a program with lots of computerized characters that act the part of 'netizens' for the purposes of interaction and amusement.
When I went back to college I did not have a phone in my apartment for a while by my choice. BTW, I was 30, getting divorced, had a voicemail box with a local phone company and used campus phones free. I knew other people that did not have phones in their places, by choice, never knew anybody that did not have a phone that wanted one. Yes, even before college when I was relatively poor.
thank you
...is 6 billion. The online population is 5. billion. Studies show the intersection to be less than .5 billion.
Slashdot community finally proven to exist. No news at eleven. Online population dont't care enough.
What is possible and helpful is community shared internet/information access. After all isn't the internet abut information?
This is what is happening in the developing countries with cyber-cafes. In Bangladesh, because of the poor phone infrastructure, there are people who operate pay-phones, but with CELL phones because the infrastructure to provide land-lines is simply too expensive but setting up the base stations is cheaper. In India Wireless in Local Loop is picking up as a big concept, due to the low cost of deployment. As one Professor in India said, "The developed nations do not need to reduce the costs any further for the basics, 40$ per phone line is fine for them, but we need to use the latest technology, not to increase the features but to reduce the cost." And this needs to be done by the developing countries as no company in the deveoped world will take this on (low profits).
But till this happens, the developing world will be a part of the digital have-nots, and there will be a digital divide.
All bow to his Noodliness!! His Noodle Appendage has touched me!
If you go with the current 255.255.255.255 scheme, that's a total of about 4.2 billion combinations. At the moment, isn't that about one IP per 1.5 people in the overall world population? I mean, only a subset of that is using the internet. However, consider individuals holding multiple IP's on one end. Is there a statistician in the house that can speculate how long until we've saturated the current system?
I know it's been discussed before, but I'm curious if anybody's considered what will break when they need to implement a new system.
No I'm not trolling.
If you're going to post a ficticious urban legend, at least remove the '>>>'s
Take note that untill recently, having the internet meant having a piece of copper strung to your house. Because most countries have not had the massive copper build out that is seen in the united states, getting internet was not possible. that is what makes some of the wireless technologies so interesting. For example, Kuwait has phone lines to only 15% of residences. Every one has a mobile phone though. To a person in kuwait, placing a call means calling a person, not a location. Internet cafes are extremely popular, satisfying demand for an internet that has no infrastructure. Which is what makes 802.11b/a and other wireless methods so interesting. I am guessing that there are as many people in the world, with dollars to spend, that the providers of wireless internet access will call customers, as currently use copper to access the internet. However, untill it is cheaper to set up a wireless internet connection than buy a similar length of copper, acceptance will obviously be poor.
If voting were effective, it would be illegal by now.
10% is approx. 620,000,000
1. Pornography
2. Gambling
3. Trolling for fights without fear of getting punched
4. Pornography
5. Easy chatting and email with friends
6. Endless time-wasting opportunity
7. Pornography
8. Groups for almost any conceivable interest
9. Pornography
What's not to like?
If 10% of the world is on-line, then why is it that any one government tries to control what is on-line, and how we get it, and the way that we get information? If the government of one place does not agree on the same rules, what happens, and who is right and who is wrong? This is why I still belive that the Internet is what ever the people on the other side of the computer make it to be. all it is, is a world wide network, and when you get 10% of the world on to the same network, what happens, we trade/share our information, files, and know how. So then what happens? they try to stop it. who has the right to stop what goes over your network? the network admin, or your slef. what whould be any difrent with the Internet???
excellent points, and i'm all out of mod points
If you're searching for the most cost-effective form of promotion you can find... Your Search Is Over - you've FOUND it - Investment is MINIMAL and Potential return is INCREDIBLE! Blast your ad to over 500 Million pre-opted-in indivdually targeted Internet users who are JUST WAITING to hear about YOUR product or service!
try { do() || do_not(); } catch (JediException err) { yoda(err); }
Your comment regarding apostrophes and their proper use is appreciated.
Apostrophes are used to indicate "possessive" nouns, as in "the Earth's population." (By the way please note capitalization of the proper noun "Earth".)
The rules regarding apostrophes are simple. When the noun does not end with the letter "s", you place the apostrophe before the "s", e.g. "Earth's."
When the noun does end with the letter "s", you place the apostrophe after the "s" and do not add another "s". Usually this occurs when the noun is plural, though this is not always the case. An example is in order:
"The cat's pajamas." --> Refers to the pajamas of ONE cat.
"The cats' pajamas." --> Refers to the pajamas of many cats.
If only I had a nickel for every user on the internet.
There is no culture in the USA besides capitalism
There is no culture in Africa besides cannibalism.
And there is no culture in China besides running people over with tanks.
Hey, looks like broad generalizations _can_ be both false and offensive!
There's a lot of uniquely American elements to US culture. I'm not saying its a better or worse culture than anyone else has, but it does exist. Open your eyes.
--saint
That figure is wrong, it is far too high. One cannot accurately measure how many actively use the internet.
Tish, as bad as AOL users can be, surely the webtv users will be first against the wall when the revolution comes.
One line blog. I hear that they're called Twitters now.
10 YEARS??? But the network has been around quite some time more than 10 years. Slashdot moron.
how is 498,000,000 10% of 6,209,000,000?
that is ~8.02%
padding figures by 25% is a bit much...
Cheers,
-j.
and still not a single cohernet conversation occurs on the AOL network.....
and its great when someone says, "Hey are you online? What's your screen name?"
"Linux hackers are funny people. They count the time in patchlevels."
..is that it ONLY touches about 10% of the world's population. What does that leave out, a couple of billion people or so? My estimate would have been that at least 70% of the entire population had Internet access of some form..the figure seems surprisingly low.
grow up...i can't tell whether you are just a troll or a 16 year old socialist wannabe. either way, it's amazing the falsehoods and outright lies you tell to make your argument the better one. i will not fight the many strawmen you throw up. i just hope the users can see thru them.
if 498,000,000 is online ...
if 0.24% is using linux as dsktop
1,195,200 ppl are using linux as desktop
if 0.7638% using gecko base browser
3,803,917 people are using gecko base browser.
-- Hasbullah bin Pit (sebol)
Capitalism works in a labor based society,
/.ers that do just that), but I saw more than my share of these people who were perfectly capable of "labor", but instead, "decided" that they were incapable. I got accosted on the streets more than once by these "poor downtrodden people", who invariably refused to show me their arms when I demanded to see them so that I could inspect them for the requisite needle marks.
Exactly what the hell, in your definition, is a 'labor-based society'? Come to think of it, what (in the logical definition) respectable society, isn't?
Labor is hard, not everyone can do it.
Wrong, wrong, and did I mention, WRONG? Sorry, there, Sherlock, but just about everyone can do "labor". Excepting, of course, the physically incapacitated, understandably. But, no, just about everyone else (as in five 9s) can do 'labor'. The problem seems to rest somewhere in between the meaning of "can do" and the meaning of "is willing to do". And believe me, I've seen enough people who can do, who aren't willing to do.
Just what the hell am I talking about? Well, I'll tell you. I had the pleasure of living in Tucson, AZ, for a year and a half. It's a great place to live, really, all told, but the downside is that the city is inundated with bums...errr...(sorry, retract that, forgot that I have to be PC)..."the homeless", because of the warm climate. These "homeless" people have the resourcefulness to create cute little cardboard signs and sell newspapers that the local fishwrap provides for them at a "reseller discount" (a whole other can of worms that is irrelevant to this discussion), but somehow, they can't seem to land a "real" job. They all seem to function well enough to do so, so what's the problem?
Oh, yeah, it's that whole "willing to do" labor thing. They might have to actually be responsible for their own actions. Call me coldhearted (and I'm sure that there will be no shortage of mindless bleeding-heart
<Sarcasm willHeGetIt="doubtful" >But I guess a "labor-based" society would be "evil", now, wouldn't it?</Sarcasm>
In Soviet Russia, Chuck Norris will still kick your ass.
billion
adj : (U.S.) denoting a quantity consisting of one thousand million items or units; (Britain) denoting a quantity consisting of one million million items or units [syn: a billion]
n 1: (in Britain) the number that is represented as a one followed by 12 zeros [syn: one million million, 1000000000000]
2: (in the United States) the number that is represented as a one followed by 9 zeros [syn: one thousand million, 1000000000]
(WordNet 1.6)
Remember those peoples have a quite "restricted" access to the net...
...
maybe the multiplication of open ANONYMOUS proxy and the rise of open ANONYMOUS mail relay is what allows them to surf just like you and me and NOT go in Jail till the sun dies...
Lets think about it as a normal pendant of the censure they have and a blissfull hope for Free Speech (sic).
Anyhow, maybe a limitation of email traffic, or better the development of specific rules for "authorized" emails should be developped (such as a small (=>not for security) PGP key that can track your email to a legitimate source, and you will only accept thoses...
Well, just don't forget that sometime, open mail relay are your only access to data out there
It takes 40+ muscles to frown, but only four to extend your arm and bitchslap the motherfucker
Before we all start patting ourselves on the back at how wonderful the net is, remember that 3/4 of the worlds population has never even made a phone call, never mind hooked up to the internet.
Has anyone English been significantly affected by the addition of millions of Japanese pages?
/ignore, the way most of us do already anyway.
Japanese websites and the implementation of the HTML image tag were the methods that led to my encountering anime for the first time.
Innovations, using the word in it's pre-M$ meaning, are seldom all good or all bad. This applies to the net in general and net users as a class in general, but people are individuals, not groups, and it's one of the peculiar features of the internet that online, they act that way especially.
I'm looking forward to future encounters with the kewl dudes. Lamers, OTOH I expect to pretty much just
give me a
If only 10% of the world has home Internet acces I would like to know what percentage of business's are online? That to me would be a greater sign of the growth and prosperity that the Internet has achieved.
Everything is possible some things are just more unlikely then others